Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/3657/-1/140/
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Charla Connor, Panache Team On Stage July 2
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Come Sunday, July 2, Anguillian clothing designer, Charla Connor, will be presenting her second runway excursion which she calls Another Dash of Panache at the Anguilla Great House.
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Charla Connor and Winnielle Guilbert
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It will be a fashion show featuring her various creative designs with some twenty young ladies doing the modelling. During the weekend of June 16-18, professional Caribbean model, Winnielle Guilbert, who was born in Antigua, but grew up in St. Kitts, was in Anguilla conducting training sessions for the Panache models at the Road Primary School Auditorium.
Miss Connor told The Anguillian that she wanted her Pananche Couture Model Team to be trained professionally so that they could improve their presentation of her clothing. “The majority of the girls are out of school,” she said. “Some of them work; others are college students and a few of them are students at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School. Their ages range from 15 to 24.”
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Members of Panache
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Charla said that initially the team members began as a modelling group for her show last year and had now developed a bond among themselves. According to her although not many of the girls are aspiring models, the training would help them to be confident on stage and in whatever they do.
“At the show I will be presenting four of my new lines and these are Animal Kingdom Gone Dotty and we have a section entitled The Anguillian and in that segment the clothes are made of newspaper,” Charla said. “Last year the show was fabulous. I have a lot of pressure on my shoulders trying to get better than last year.”
The young fashion designer, who always had an interest in colours and clothes, has also been spurred on by grandmother who was an seamstress and her father Charlie Connor, a trained artist. At present, Charla is a student at the University of the Virgin Islands, where she is pursuing an Associates degree in Business Management. She will later transfer to Atlanta to complete a degree in fashion design and merchandising.
Charla’s friend, Winnielle Guilbert, producer of last year’s fashion show in St. Kitts, entitled Show Me Your Soul, said she was delighted to assist with the training of the Panache Couture models. “I love Anguilla, I love Charla and I love helping other models,Winnielle stated. “I have been a model for sixteen years so I have quite a bit of experience with everything basically when it comes to modelling. We train and represent our models; we manage a fashion photographer and a make-up artist. We put on fashion shows and we aspire to build a company whose main purpose is to excel in the fashion industry.”